Ushijima Noriyuki (1900 - 1997)

Born in Kumamoto, Ushijima Noriyuki graduated at the Western painting division of the Tokyo School of Fine arts in 1928. Before WWII he was mainly known as a painter, exhibiting at the Teiten; in 1946 he contributed a print to set 2 of Ichimokushû and to the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai exhibition in the same year. For that exhibition he used the name Ushijima Ken.
He became a professor at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, ánd he continued making woodblock prints, a.o. a series of six semi-abstract landscape prints, published ca. 1965 by Kato Junji (of Nihon Hanga Kenkyusha).
In 1983 he received the order of Cultural Merit. He died of respiratory failure on September 16th 1997, aged 98. In 2004 a large retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Fuchu Museum of Art (Ushijima Noriyuki and Early Showa paintings: between the abstract and representational).